DB or [0223]. I'll just leave this right here.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Thats only 50% of the equation.  They could have been applied in opposite fashion from the way you describe.

[running-man]

How is that possible?  Either they are both dates and the order is set, or one / both are not dates and then we have to go back and totally reevaluate the dating theory on the giant and small numbered 70-76's

There's precious little data to work with here, I think you gotta go with the logical over the possible and get more data to confirm or deny.

[Power Surge]

I wish I had access to more pics and information on this subject, but I'll give my 2 cents on what I've noticed.

I've spent a few hours looking on the web at DP/DB guns. Here's a few observations..

- Restamped DP to DB guns. After looking at a lot of pics, I don't believe any guns were changed from DP to DB. Two reasons why...  1- all the pics of "proposed" restamped guns, talk about the lower B portion being added to an existing P. If you look at those guns, there is no double stamping over the existing P. If it were a P restamped with a B, you'd see indications of the P being stamped over. 2- this one should completely debunk the restamped theory. Every DP gun I see, has both the character for the city, AND the three type 56 characters. All the DB guns ONLY have the city marker. If you are STARTING with a DP gun, then a restamped DP to DB will also have the type 56 characters....and none do.

- the 70/71/72 dating in question. If you notice....the guns in question here that have 70 stamped arsenals and then are stamped again elsewhere, ONLY have the 70 and the arsenal code. There is NO original stamped serial! I bet you anything, these were leftover receivers from 1970, that were finally put into production at a later date (i.e. 72). I don't think the Chinese were scrubbing guns that early....and why would they? It's a military weapon. They don't care what it looks like...just put the new stamp somewhere else. As for that 3 part number under the receiver.....IF the middle digit matches the "date" check digits in the new serial, then that's a pretty good bet that center number is also a year identifier. Does this three part number under the receiver ONLY appear on double stamped guns? If so....it's probably part of the redating an older unused receiver.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Yup..  I hear ya, and for the most part agree.

But...  The DP to DB was not a complete B stamp over the P.  I have seen several guns that appear to have the bottom hook/lobe added to the P to make it a B.   

[running-man]

All good points PS.  The lack of the 'type 56' markings from P to B is a good observation and you're right for the most part.   You were going good up until here:

Every DP gun I see, has both the character for the city, AND the three type 56 characters. All the DB guns ONLY have the city marker. If you are STARTING with a DP gun, then a restamped DP to DB will also have the type 56 characters....and none do.

These DB's with the 'type 56' characters are markedly different than other DB's though, the B's are highly stylized and don't look at all like P's converted to B's. 

I would say that even the B's that are odd looking could easily have been stamped that way.  It's not a stretch to think the Chinese took and modified a P stamp with the needed features to make it a B (welded up material and then remachined it) and used that modified stamp to mark the DP's.  I would suspect that 1970's China would not have been flush with Roman letter stamps for marking their SKSs with

Either way, they are good observations.    I'd love to know if more mid 70's gun have that x-xx-xx identifier on the bottom of the receiver.  I'll look through the survey data and see if I can turn anything up.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Its also not a stretch to say China aided guns to Pak and then later to Bang after their revolution (plenty of evidence of this) and simply modified already existing DP marked guns.  Seeing they were imported from china, they could simply be rifles that never made the trip... Just like the Norinco marked IC guns that never made the trip.  Not surprised to se a secondary 'rework' for bang destination in 72.  Bang declared Independence March 1971 and the war was over by Dec 1971.

[running-man]

Its also not a stretch to say China aided guns to Pak and then later to Bang after their revolution (plenty of evidence of this) and simply modified already existing DP marked guns. 

But the data just doesn't jive with that.  No 五六式 on the DB guns for the most part (except for the example I showed above) yet every DP I've seen has it.  How'd it magically disappear moving forward being that the DPs have it between the DP and S/N stampings?  Hard to disappear a stamp like that w/o scrubbing, and if you're going to scrub, why leave the DP then change it to a DB that looks like crap?

The serial number ranges are pretty different between DB and DP: DB's are all over the place, 5 or 6 digit undateable odd balls and 721's while the DPs are for the most part year 19 through year 25 w/o the oddballs. 

I think I'm firmly in the "No way the Chinese simply completed the 'B'" camp.  If they did, there are a crapton of oddball DPs noone here has ever seen.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Who knows...  But the Pak and Bang theory is still possible imo.

[running-man]

It's absolutely possible, but to move it beyond possible to probable we need some hard data.  Otherwise it's the same as ex-DDR, lots of possibles and pontificating, but severely lacking any evidence to actually confirm it. 

[Justin Hell]

Has any thought gone into DB or DP meaning something completely different than has previously been speculated?  Destination Pakistan and Destination Bangladesh seems odd to me as to why the Chinese would even resort to anything English translatable.  I have been wondering if perhaps since there were so many material and design modifications for these guns....the DB and DP might just be the Mercury vs Ford of the late SKS world.  Minor differences, but they seemed to be trying to evolve to cheaper and faster production...the differences in quality to older SKS is obvious from a distance....well once you know what to look for.

Has there ever been any evidence any SKS's marked as these ever were in either said country?

I think the possibility of these being assembled from pre existing pre stamped parts is very likely...so actual dating would be impossible. The 0226 I just got, which exhibits the same features as these, a few cast parts...the roughly machined barrel...etc.  It could be that just a particular era of SKS production was not necessarily last ditch, but they weren't throwing any resources towards maintenance of the tooling...hence the ad hock P/B stamping.

I also have been wondering if pinned barrels were perhaps all made at the same place, and then shipped to various smaller arsenals...the ribbing on various version's barrels which do not seem to be intentional might be why they seem to appear in this era, the various cast parts also seems to be an indicator that they might just be slapping these together with parts they had to make crudely sometimes. Maybe these were just made to be stockpiled while the tooling and spare parts lasted, and they were just 'creating jobs'. 

This may have just been a 'dark era' for the Chinese SKS...before quality production resumed post Norinco and commercially produced guns.

I find myself a little silly being so interested in the crummiest SKS's out there...but they are just so neat.

[Greasemonkey]

Just a dumb question,  Justin Hell states they are

the crummiest SKS's out there

so, something I haven't seen brought up, so I'll just chuck it out there
DP - Drill Purpose  and or  DB - Drill Brigade   

Maybe they were military rejects, based on what I see about the quality, something was out of spec, instead of just trashing them, they designated for Drill use. China did think enough about this weapon design to use it in an "Honor Guard" capacity, so why not a bottom dollar beater drill rifle. Maybe they were made to a lower standard, as a lower quality, yet fully functional weapon.  Heck, maybe they were rear line weapons, used just to guard some military installation, weapons factories or Chinas Area 51. Or just maybe, another type of internal Police weapon.

[Loose}{Cannon]

I would look more into their militia groups.

[Power Surge]

Well here's my thoughts... we have zero proof of anything at this point, so ANY theory is just speculation.

The other thing that's cross my mind related to this topic, is something Justin mentioned above....  why the heck would the Chinese mark a gun with anything English? I can see them using the number system...but why use letters? For all we know...these could be latin letters, like the older letter guns. There is a D, P, and B on the latin letter list. 

[armedhippie]

I'm new to owning 1 but been reading and seeing them for awhile. The 25,000,062 DP I just got is almost up there in quality with my pinned barrell Public Security SKS....except a few places where it wasn't polished up and you can see mill marks. The gas tube Inside diameter is tight as well, as its a B**** to get back on. These things I can live with and are not like some of the other rough 1's I've come across.

Now here is a possible theory...A WAG on my part.... Since we've seen late parts and cast pieces and its allready been thrown out there, that more than likely, they were made at some of the smaller arsenals...

Could be that they were made at Non-arsenals?  I've been reading about a couple different Chinese companys that name starts with DP. DP Lighting for example. It could explain weird stamps and all over the place quality.

Everyone feel free to shoot this down like it was a game of duck hunt on your nintendo.  Just a thought as I'm still on the new side of these.

A lil off subject but since we've been talking about some quality control problems... I've been noticing the worst of the worst and most cast parts I've come across have been on [   ]  arsenals.

[Justin Hell]

Considering the variations we have seen in factory codes...could DB and DP simply be factory codes, just in a different manner than before? Perhaps keeping up the production of the SKS whilst the more refined and better tooled factories manufactured other stuff?

It kind of bugs me that they would use any kind of English abbreviation at all, when most of these are stamped with Chinese city designations...

GM brings up a point that I had considered before too...low grade weapons for training purposes.  They certainly aren't pretty in most circumstances, but are functional and for training purposes...serviceable as much as nicer ones would be.

Composed and posted after AH's comment...just was too sleepy to click post I suppose...new dog is kicking my ass.

[armedhippie]

Considering the variations we have seen in factory codes...could DB and DP simply be factory codes, just in a different manner than before? Perhaps keeping up the production of the SKS whilst the more refined and better tooled factories manufactured other stuff?

This right here    What all were they putting out at this time? The SKS got put on the back burner until they figured out that Americans would buy up any and all they would send us, Maybe?

Sorry if this is a bit of a rehash of discussion for some of yall. Now that I have 1 I've become a bit more invested in finding out more about them.

[Loose}{Cannon]

I hate these basted things.   

[running-man]

A lil off subject but since we've been talking about some quality control problems... I've been noticing the worst of the worst and most cast parts I've come across have been on [   ]  arsenals.

I would have to agree with this 100%.  Some of the []'s are just crap.  I always thought they constituted the experimentation houses.  We know that the [0138] factory produced the stamped receiver (it's actually more just a bunch of cast components with sheet metal and rivets connecting the whole thing together much like a late AK would be) and [0221] had numerous cast receiver examples.  Within the assembly there are lots of loose, wide open tolerances that were needed to even come close to building a fully functioning/reliable firearm out of parts like that.  I suspect there was quite a bit of hand work needed to get some of them to operate / pass final inspection.  Along with the loose tolerances, there are also lots of cast parts, lots of pinned barrels, lots of real roughly machined barrels/components, and lots of very sloppy looking spot welds on magazines, trigger groups, & other stamped components.

With the gun in the very first post in this thread, there seems to be some kind of connection between a DB gun and a [0223]...even if it's only minor such as [0223] is where the DP factory sourced their hardware from. 

We obviously need to get as much detail from every DB/DP we can find, but I'd also suggest we probably need to look over every [0223] and maybe every [0XXX] to see what kinds of similarities we can find amongst all of them.  The bottom X-XX-XX stampings were something I'd never seen before, and all of a sudden padams8888 shows two almost identical ones in a single thread and it turns out I had one in my files I'd never paid attention to.  The info is out there, the data just needs to be scrutinized.  To find that data we need to settle on what to begin to look for. 

[Loose}{Cannon]

I said it I dunno how many times.  I believe the [] guns are from the same location, and Im not even surprised to see a DB on a [] gun.  They have way too much in common.

[running-man]

Lots of people believed ex-ddrs were special and stamped in East Germany to boot.  You know as well as I do that we need solid evidence to move it beyond a hunch. 

It may take months and we might never find anything else of value that moves the needle one way or the other. On the other hand, we may find a trove of info next week that definitively proves things if we concentrate on something specific.